Wreck: Housing lottery headaches

Forget midterms and finals week, there is no more stressful time for a Quinnipiac University student than the days leading up to the dreaded housing lottery.

Freshmen, sophomores and juniors who choose to live in Quinnipiac housing their senior year all go through it. Your palms sweat as you navigate your way to MyHousing, fumbling to find the correct page where your randomly assigned lottery number awaits you. The next emotion is either relief or anxiety, because a low or high number is the difference between Hill or Complex, above or below ground.

Getting your number isn’t even the worst part of the whole housing debacle. You see, you then have to actually find a place to live. You find it though. The perfect suite, on the perfect floor, the perfect distance to the parking garage. And then the unthinkable happens. You have to kick someone out.

The number of people per housing suite seems to change each year. Take, for instance, going from sophomore year in New Village to junior year in Crescent on York Hill. The dreaded triple always causes a problem, because you have to go from a seven-person to a six-person suite. Tensions run high because no one, and I mean no one, wants to be kicked to the curb.

Junior Resident Assistant Alex Cieply knows firsthand just how stressful the housing lottery can be for students, but offers insight into the biggest complaints of the system.

“It is unfortunate that people have to change their group sizes from year to year, but that’s partly what makes the housing experience what it is: being able to experience different settings with potentially different groups of people,” Cieply said.

Cieply says the random housing lottery number system is fair.

“[It’s] the fairest way possible for everyone to get the best possible housing,” he said.

While the explanations provided clearly make sense, it doesn’t make the process any easier for students. The housing lottery still causes weeks of unnecessary stress. It may only be two semesters, but let’s be honest, that can feel like a lifetime if you’re forced to live in Complex.